Population threat linked to global warming

[gulfcoastliberal]

Global warming cannot be addressed without the international community addressing the problem of population growth, a British scientist says.

Chris Rapley, the director of the British Antarctic Survey, says the annual increase in the world's population of 76 million people threatens "the welfare and quality of life of future generations," reported the Independent Friday.

Population growth was the "Cinderella" issue of the environmental debate, because no one dares to raise it because of controversy.

Some scientists suggest that the Earth can sustain 2 billion to 3 billion people at a good standard of living over the long term, but the current population of 6.5 billion -- expected to rise to 8 billion -- will leave an ever greater "footprint" on the planet, Rapley wrote in an article for the BBC News Web site.

http://www.zpenergy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1684

Save the Earth - quit yer breedin! ;)

[NMDemDist2]

1. i'm childless

:P

[gulfcoastliberal]

3. Me too!

Sure, I have superb genes, but no desire to add to the planets already unsustainable population. Fortunately my fiance (yay, just got engaged!) feels the same way. I told her before we got serious that I'm not having any kids, ever.

[NMDemDist2]

4. I'm 50 so it's too late for me

expect her to get a little squirrely around 30-35 then it passes

[Progressive4Life]

14. No kiddies for me, either

I came to this decision about three years ago. For one thing, the population is out of control. For another, the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and I don't have the heart to bring a child into the whole mess. Furthermore, I've had endometriosis since I was 13, so I couldn't reproduce if I wanted to.

[mom cat]

2. I totally agree with you on this... and if we do not voluntarily cut

our reproductive rate, some authoritarian will force the decision on us in the future. Just one generation of a "no more that one" committment would make a world of difference. Two generations of such rational reproduction would be even better.

[DELUSIONAL]

5. Nixon was birth control for me

I didn't want to bring any children into a world where a vile person like that could be elected. Plus I predicted that someone worse than Nixon would occupy the white house. Damn I really hate to be so right.

[Grover_Cleveland]

6. I don't have any children.

But I don't think a big population by itslef is the problem.

For example, I think that 6 billion people using nuclear power is better than 1 billion people burning fossil fuels.

I've seen various lists of the most environmentally sustainable countries. The countries of Western Europe dominate the top of the lists. And those are among the most densely populated countries in the world.

[NNadir]

7. As an advocate of nuclear power, I must disagree.

One of the things I worry about in the second nuclear age is creating the impression that energy can be used indiscriminately. It cannot be nor should it be. Nuclear energy is an excellent form of energy but it is not without risks.

Neither is the issue of the environment is limited merely to global climate change. There are other issues including chemical pollution, habitat destruction, salinity of agricultural land, depletion of water, the integrity of the water, that are intimately involved with population.

Six billion people, especially six billion people with decent lifestyles, is not environmentally acceptable. The climate change issue may be the most exigent environmental issue, but it is not the only environmental issue connected with the earth's carrying capacity for human beings, which is clearly exceeded. The task is to find an ethical way to reduce the population.

[Grover_Cleveland]

8. my response to your post......

Almost every rich country in the world has a birth rate lower than replacement level. As the world gets richer, this trend will happen in more countries.

Japan's population actually got smaller last year:

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/12/26/japan.population.reut

The CNN article seems to portary Japan's shrinking population as a problem, not as a reason to celebrate.

You mentioned water.

Over in Ashkelon, Israel, they just opened up a new desalination plant. It set two world records.

First, at 320,000 cubic meters of water per day, it's the world's biggest.

Secondly, at only 53 cents per cubic meter, it's also the world's cheapest. That's about 1/5 penny per gallon.

This particular plant has its own 80 MW gas power plant.

Here's one article on it:

http://www.ejpress.org/article/4873

Here's another article:

http://www.water-technology.net/projects/israel

And here are the technical specifications:

http://www.water-technology.net/projects/israel/specs.html

The plant was designed and built by a French company.

Of course I'd prefer using nuclear power instead of gas. But desalination at 53 cents per cubic meter means there's no reason to worry about water shortages.

[NNadir]

9. I am fully aware that population pressure falls with wealth.

I make the same argument often in my posts here. But this is not to say that we can wave our magic hands and have everyone live like an American. On the contrary, we should be asking Americans to live more like the people of less extravagant nations. I am certain that the attempt to create 6 billion American lifestyles will be fatal to six billion.

There is an old environmental slogan that says, "live simply so that others may simply live." It is worth repeating. The ethical path to global population control will pass through raising living standards for most of the world, but there are limits.

Specifically I don't necessarily trust desalination as a strategy. It is to rich with the possibility for the law of unintended consequences. I would expect many ecosystems to be damaged by changes in salinity. I note that this is one of the big risks of global climate change: That ocean currents will be destabilized by changes in salinity.

It is very likely that my children will NOT have access to oil and gas; they may not have access to the atmosphere. I am very concerned about the long term viability of many systems on which they otherwise depend. We owe to future generations to place as light a finger as we can on the heat flows of the planet as is possible. The day of the sledgehammer is, and should be, over.

I also note that unlike Israel and the State of California, many regions of the world are way inland. When one adds the cost of shipping water to those regions, including the American Midwest, desalinated water is not necessarily cheap under all circumstances. The Colorado River, not a drop of which usually sees the Gulf of California, produces about 14 million acre feet or 17 billion cubic meters of flow. At $0.53/m^3 this is about 9 billion dollars worth of water. It is a mistake to think that 0.53/m^3 is cheap, especially for agricultural water, the very water to which access is most seriously threatened by global climate change.

http://www.iid.com/water/irr-agriculture.html

Seawater is 3.5% salt. World demand for salt is on the order of 200 million metric tons. Thus the amount of salt produced in just providing an amount of water comparable to the Colorado River would swamp the world salt markets by a factor of 3. This means that salt would become a waste product, needing disposal. As a practical matter that disposal means dumping in the ocean. That will have environmental consequences.

Waste is bad.

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/salt/salt_mcs96.pdf

Vast desalination schemes are fine on paper, like the hundreds of solar energy schemes one hears about continually. However in this crisis it is not sufficient to rely on things that sound good but have not been tested on scale. Desalination is used in many places in the world, but nowhere is it used to produce the bulk of the water for a major industrial nation. I note that one of the the largest desalination plants in the United States is that at the Diablo Canyon nuclear station - and that water is required just for the reactor's operations. As an industrial water operation it is decidedly small time.

I believe that I understand nuclear technology about as well as anyone who posts on this website, and I have been arguing for the nuclear renaissance that is now under way for so long that I can address just about any of the routine arguments about the subject in my sleep. To criticize the quality of my own writings, I think I often come off as glib on the subject of nuclear energy. This is maybe excusable to some extent because nuclear energy is way too demonized in the common imagination, though the matter is recently changing as the wolf nears the door. The world is now is now in various stages of providing 178 new nuclear reactors. However this is not nearly enough, since the world needs thousands of reactors just to survive global climate change.

Nuclear technology is demanding. It requires the efforts of many thousands of highly trained and highly educated professionals in highly demanding disciplines. A nuclear engineer must be a person who is familiar with chemistry, metallurgy, advanced mathematics, nuclear physics, electrical engineering, statistical thermodynamics, heat transfer, and systems analysis as well as human issues.

We cannot just wave our hands and have all these people show-up as we can produce a glass of water as from a spigot. It will take exactly that of which we have the least to spare, time.

At two billion dollars a pop, 1000 nuclear reactors would cost two trillion dollars, in capital costs alone. While this is much cheaper than any other global climate change mitigating option, it is an amount that is the equivalent of 1/5th of the US GDP for all purposes. Such a construction project is necessary, and it is quite possibly our only hope of survival, but this in nowhere near the same thing as saying it is easy. Thus we cannot afford to party with energy like a bunch of drunken sailors with beer on stateside shore leave after a tour in Bahrain.

Any attempt to raise the output of greenhouse gases to provide additional energy including desalination energy, right now is wrong and is to be resisted. Conservation has an important role to play, serious conservation. This is because global climate change is happening now. It will not wait until we have had time to build enough reactors.

[Grover_Cleveland]

11. My response to that.......

I make the same argument often in my posts here. But this is not to say that we can wave our magic hands and have everyone live like an American. On the contrary, we should be asking Americans to live more like the people of less extravagant nations. I am certain that the attempt to create 6 billion American lifestyles will be fatal to six billion.

I disagree with you.

I want every person in the world to be able to live a first world standard of living.

I want every person to have access to clean water, clean nuclear power, modern medicine, air conditioning and heating as applicable, and adequate housing, entertainment and recreation.

There is no physical reason why this cannot happen. The earth has more than enough physical resources for this.

There is an old environmental slogan that says, "live simply so that others may simply live." It is worth repeating.

One country's high standard of living is not the cause of another country's poverty. There's plenty of uranium and seawater for everyne. Countries that use modern farming equipment, and don't harass the farmers or steal their land, have plenty of food. The paper and lumber industries plant more trees than they cut down. The earth is full of rocks for building materials.

I don't see there being a physical shortage of any physical resource. And I don't see how reducing our standard of living could make anyone else better off.

Specifically I don't necessarily trust desalination as a strategy. It is to rich with the possibility for the law of unintended consequences. I would expect many ecosystems to be damaged by changes in salinity. I note that this is one of the big risks of global climate change: That ocean currents will be destabilized by changes in salinity.

Certainly there are some problems. However, I suspect that the daily change in salinity due to natural evaporation is probably more than 100,000 times higher than what could happen from desalination.

It is very likely that my children will NOT have access to oil and gas;

That's probably true. But they won't need it. People didn't stop using candles because the world ran out of wax. They stopped using candles because the light bulb was invented.

they may not have access to the atmosphere.

That is not true.

Air pollution peaks when per capita GNP hits about $6,000. After that, the air gets cleaner. And the richer the country gets, the cleaner its air gets.

Human life expectancy has tripled in the past 300 years. And it keeps getting higher and higher. The air in the future will be much cleaner than it is today, and life expectancy will be much higher.

I also note that unlike Israel and the State of California, many regions of the world are way inland.

Yes, pipes and aquaducts cost money. So maybe add on another 1/5 penny per gallon to the price. So now that's 2/5 penny per gallon.

Seawater is 3.5% salt. World demand for salt is on the order of 200 million metric tons. Thus the amount of salt produced in just providing an amount of water comparable to the Colorado River would swamp the world salt markets by a factor of 3. This means that salt would become a waste product, needing disposal. As a practical matter that disposal means dumping in the ocean. That will have environmental consequences.

Daily evaporation probably has an effect that's more than 100,000 times bigger.

Vast desalination schemes are fine on paper, like the hundreds of solar energy schemes one hears about continually. However in this crisis it is not sufficient to rely on things that sound good but have not been tested on scale. Desalination is used in many places in the world, but nowhere is it used to produce the bulk of the water for a major industrial nation. I note that one of the the largest desalination plants in the United States is that at the Diablo Canyon nuclear station - and that water is required just for the reactor's operations. As an industrial water operation it is decidedly small time.

The new plant in Israel is desalinizing 320,000 cubic meters of water per day. That's not on paper. That's real.

I believe that I understand nuclear technology about as well as anyone who posts on this website,

Yes.

Any attempt to raise the output of greenhouse gases to provide additional energy including desalination energy, right now is wrong and is to be resisted.

I'm all for nuclear power.

Conservation has an important role to play, serious conservation. This is because global climate change is happening now. It will not wait until we have had time to build enough reactors.

For people who get their electricity from nuclear power, why should they conserve?

Using energy gives us a higher standard of living. And a higher standard of living allows us to use better technology to make the environment cleaner. It's a self feeding cycle. The more energy we use, the richer we get. And the richer we get, the cleaner the environment becomes.

Poor people use wood and dung for energy. That's very dirty.

As they get richer, they switch to oil and coal. That's still dirty, but not as dirty.

As they get even richer, they switch to nuclear power. That's much cleaner.

But it takes energy to become rich.

So using energy makes you richer, and that makes the environment better.

The pollution curve peaks at per capita GNP of about $6,000. After that, pollution goes down. The richer the country is, the cleaner it becomes.

As we use more and more energy in the future, the air will get cleaner and cleaner.

There's no reason why we should reduce our standard of living.

20 years ago, only people in the top 1% of income had cell phones. Today, almost everyone has them. People everywhere are getting richer and richer, and there is no going back on that.

[NNadir]

12. Everyone wants to be Bill Gates too.

Well, the argument that earth's resources are inexhaustible is an old one, but I don't agree that looking at the past is always a perfect way of predicting the future. It is not.

I have heard your arguments before, and I think they are frankly, absurd.

There are many claims here, and I do not intend to be comprehensive in stating my objections, although I disagree with about everything you write.

First of all, there apparently is NOT any place to put the waste of fossil fuels that have created all this wealth about which you wax enthusiastically. Conservatives, of course, don't believe in global climate change, much as they don't believe in evolution. However scientific consensus is overwhelming that global climate change is real and is quickly reaching a tipping point. Thus wealth has already created a condition that is already impoverishing many people, from those in Mali to those in New Orleans, as well as those in France and in Spain.

Thus the argument that wealthy countries do not impoverish other countries is absurd. When one moves beyond the environmental argument to social and economic considerations the clarity of that opinion becomes even clearer. Nigeria, which is a large exporter of oil, has a per capita power consumption of 8 watts. There are places in Nigeria where oil leaks have destroyed the drinking water of citizens who have no stake nor no reward for Nigeria's oil revenue. This situation in Nigeria allows Americans to avoid oil wells in pristine places like the coast of Big Sur.

I have seen first hand in India how poverty creates wealth. Disposable people are very efficient pieces of industrial equipment. If one of these disposable machines dies, or gets sick, you get another one, and that's all there is to it. India's wealth is NOT trickling down to the majority of the citizens.

Yes, the sea evaporates, and yes the earth is a giant desalination machine, but surely you don't think that this concentration effect is normally limited to the shore areas, do you? Concentration gradients in salt do indeed effect ecology, and by extension, sustainability. Six billion people using American quantities of water obtained from the sea and dumping the salt where they find it, will make for a pickling solution on every coast line. This will not increase wealth, it will decrease it.

When people come here to the E&E forum with breathless accounts of new technology, what is almost always missing is a sense of scale. We often are provided with links, for instance, to solar facilities that produce 8,000 kilo"watts" and are accompanied by a cavalcade of press releases. Typically these plants really produce a few trillion joules. However world energy demand is on the orders of hundreds of exajoules, so effectively the technology is actually next to invisible.

In the United States, water is typically measured in the unfortunate English unit, the acre-foot. This is equal to 1,233.5 cubic meters. Thus a plant producing 320,000 cubic meters is producing about 260 acre-feet of water, enough to irrigate a 260 acre field that grows a crop that doesn't require much water. It is therefore tiny. It is not on scale, and it is not significant. Therefore the environmental consequences of bringing it to scale are not known.

In California, an inhabited desert where water is often scarce, water sells for about $100 acre-foot. http://www.soilmoisture.com/water.html Some people think this is too expensive. I note that your water supply is already six times as expensive, and that's before it's pumped anywhere.

Everyone pooh-poohs the economic cost of their favorite technologies, of course, but irrespective of this hand waving, with which I am very familiar, the economics does indeed dominate. This is why there is not a significant solar PV capacity even though everyone praises solar energy in theory out the wazoo.

I support nuclear energy because it is produced on scale. We know and can measure its external cost on economically viable large scale full sized industrial units, hundreds of them having operating over many decades. When we compare these devices with those devices that have produced what may be transient wealth, fossil fuel devices, we know immediately that they are superior, by measurement of on scale systems. We know the drawbacks, what we should not do, like build graphite moderated reactors for instance, and what works well, boiling water and pressurized water reactors for instance. Reactors now being built are of the third industrial generation (Gen III) and reactors built in the future will be even better than these devices. Still, it is not a small matter to provide them, as I noted previously.

Even so, the question is highly problematic as to whether or not this technology will be enough, or as to whether people even grasp the magnitude of the need for it or will do so in a timely manner. I think most advocates of the "unlimited wealth" school, just as most advocates of the "renewable energy only" school are simply playing ostrich. The crisis that upon us is very real and very dangerous. We'd all better sober up.

[gulfcoastliberal]

15. Nice post.

We need to majorly emphasize birth control and get a handle on the overpopulation problem. Remember, we may be a rich country - but we're also thrid in population - only India & China have more people. They need to not outlaw stem cells, but rather outlaw fertility clinics. Call me heartless bastard, but we don't need more people - and those stories of people have litters of kids like puppies are just wrong, gross, and ridiculous.

[philb]

10. I've worked in the nuclear industry and don't think nuclear is a viable

energy source due to the major problems of radioactive materials in all of the fuel cycle chain,
not only is there no safe or cost effective way to dispose of the highly toxic waste that will be
toxic for many centuries, but I concluded its impossible to protect the fuel cycle radioactive materials from
terrorists and such.


Short term we have a lot of energy efficiency, conservation, CHP, etc. that is cost effective that we should be
pursuing; along with fuel cells, wind, solar, etc.

We have a huge amount of fossil fuel supply out there that most aren't aware of. But the real problem with fossil
fuel supplies is the major environmental effects that a huge and growing population imposes.

[NNadir]

13. Of course, many thousands of people who also worked in the nuclear

industry disagree.

In what capacity did you work in the nuclear industry? Let's start there. I think we've done this before, haven't we? Computers, I think? Am I right?

Are you among those who can provide us with the details of how many people have been injured by nuclear operations? Have you data comparing these to the number of persons who have been injured by fossil fuel operations? You seem to be a fan of these operations. Have you worked in fossil fuels as well?

How many people were killed by nuclear operations during your tenure? Was it as many people as those killed among "those who used work in the coal industry" last week in West Virginia?

Since you are concerned about wastes that "get away" maybe you are prepared to familiarize us, through your special expertise on the subject with the manner in which fossil fuel wastes are contained? Please be sure to include your strategy for containing not only the spectrum of toxic compounds released, but the most dangerous one as well. That would be carbon dioxide. It is waste, and there is NO solution.

I have personally known many people who worked in various fields, including my own, who were incompetent to understand the industry. Most of them ended up as people who "used to work" in the industry.